5.  The applicant was born in 1961 in Gusar, Azerbaijan, and is currently serving a life sentence in Gobustan Prison.
6.  The applicant is an Azerbaijani national of Lezgi ethnic origin. He was a member of “Sadval” which was considered by its members a Lezgi welfare and cultural organisation. The organisation, however, has also been accused of harbouring extreme nationalist and separatist ideas.
7.  In 1994 the applicant was arrested and brought to trial as one of the planners and perpetrators of a bomb attack in the Baku Metro (underground railway system), which had been carried out on 19 March 1994. As a result of this attack, fourteen people died and fifty people received bodily injuries of various degrees. The applicant was also accused of cultivating narcotic plants in his garden.
8.  On 3 May 1996 the Supreme Court, sitting as a court of first instance for especially serious crimes, found that the applicant, together with the other accused persons, was guilty, inter alia, of creating an anti-government organised criminal group which had planned and carried out a bomb explosion in the Baku Metro which had resulted in numerous casualties among the civilian population. The court convicted the applicant under Articles 15, 17, 61, 65 and 227 of the Criminal Code of 1960, which was in force at that time, and sentenced him to death with confiscation of property. This judgment was final and not subject to appeal under the rules of criminal procedure applicable at that time.
9.  On 10 February 1998 the Milli Majlis (Parliament) adopted the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and Correctional Labour Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Connection with the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Republic of Azerbaijan (“the Law of 10 February 1998”). The Law of 10 February 1998 amended all the relevant domestic legal provisions, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment. Pursuant to this law, the penalties of all convicts sentenced to death, including the applicant, were automatically commuted to life imprisonment.
10.  In 2000 a new Code of Criminal Procedure (“CCrP”) and new Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan were adopted. Before the new CCrP's entry into force on 1 September 2000, on 14 July 2000 Parliament passed a transitional law allowing the lodging of an appeal under the new CCrP against final first-instance judgments delivered in accordance with the old criminal procedure rules (“the Transitional Law”).
11.  The applicant attempted to use the opportunity provided to him by the Transitional Law and on 4 August 2004 lodged a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court. He drafted this appeal himself, without any legal assistance. In his appeal, he claimed that his conviction on 3 May 1996 had been unfair.
12.  According to the Government, on 22 March 2005 the Supreme Court “informed the applicant that the appeal hearing concerning his case would be held on 12 April 2005”. According to the applicant he did not receive any such summons and in general did not receive any information concerning his case for several months.
13.  In the meantime, the applicant's relatives hired a lawyer who prepared a new draft of the cassation appeal on behalf of the applicant and submitted it to the Supreme Court on 26 May 2005.
14.  However, by a letter of 14 June 2005, the Supreme Court informed the lawyer that on 12 April 2005 it had already held a hearing and examined the applicant's original cassation appeal of 4 August 2004.
15.  By a letter of 21 June 2005 the Supreme Court sent the applicant the full copy of the Supreme Court's decision of 12 April 2005. According to this decision the court found that the applicant's guilt had been duly established during the trial in the first-instance court. The court dismissed the applicant's appeal as unsubstantiated.
16.  On 8 July 2005 the applicant lodged an additional cassation appeal with the President of the Supreme Court, asking that the case be reopened and referred to the Plenum of the Supreme Court. This request was granted.
17.  In his additional cassation appeal, the applicant argued, inter alia, that his conviction had been unfair and that his death penalty should have been commuted to a fixed-term prison sentence of up to fifteen years. He also claimed that his conviction under Article 61 (“Sabotage”) of the Criminal Code of 1960 should be “re-characterised” under Article 282 (“Sabotage”) of the Criminal Code of 2000, according to which the maximum sentence was fifteen years' imprisonment.
18.  According to the Government, on 10 November 2005 the Supreme Court “informed the applicant and his lawyer that the hearing of the Plenum of the Supreme Court concerning this case would be held on 24 November 2005”. According to the applicant and his lawyer, they did not receive any such summons and, in general, did not receive any information concerning the case for several months.
19.  On 24 November 2005 the Plenum of the Supreme Court dismissed the applicant's additional cassation appeal in the part concerning the fairness of his conviction and the lawfulness of commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment. On the other hand, the Plenum accepted that, due to changes in the substance of certain criminal offences under the Criminal Code of 2000, the applicant's convictions should be “re‑characterised”. However, the Plenum left his sentence of life imprisonment intact.